Parents: Colerain students expelled due to race

Parents of four black students filed a federal lawsuit against Northwest schools and the Colerain Township Police Department Tuesday alleging their children were kicked out of school and denied due process because of their race.

The $25,000 lawsuit alleges constitutional rights of four Colerain High School students were violated April 10.

That's when school administrators and Colerain Township police allegedly rounded up the students, "held them in a windowless room guarded by armed police officers for upward of six hours and interrogated them" about alleged gang-related affiliations discovered through social media.

Administrators accused more than a dozen students of making "street" signs and belonging to a gang.

The suit alleges white students engaged in similar conduct and were not questioned or disciplined.

"It is not a crime to be an African-American teenager. Yet, on April 10, 2014, Colerain High School administrators in coordination with Colerain Township police officer acted as if it were," the lawsuit states.

School officials referred inquiries to district attorney John Concannon.

"We believe that this was handled properly," he told The Enquirer. "To have ignored the threats would have been wrong. To investigate them fairly was the way to handle it, and that's what we did."

Concannon said the lawsuit contains significant inaccuracies, including implying only African American students were disciplined. He said students of other races were suspended and expelled too.

Almost 1,000 more white students are enrolled at the high school than black students, but black students were suspended or expelled a total of 229 more days than white students during the 2012-2013 school year, according to disciplinary records obtained by The Enquirer.

"The district recognizes that students do not shed their constitutional rights at the school door, as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court and other case law," he said in a statement the school issued Tuesday. "However, the district does recognize its right and duty to limit student speech when those actions interfere with the safety of students, or the ability of the administration to maintain a school environment that is conducive to learning. "

The families also filed a motion seeking to expunge the expulsions from their kids' records.

Most of the expulsions stemmed from videos shared on social media in which students made rap videos and flashed hand gestures associated with hip hop culture, attorneys said.

Parents said the students involved called themselves the "money gang" but that's just a group of student athletes who hang out after school -- not a real gang.

Teressa Heath, one of the parents, said Colerain police harassed her son all summer and kicked him out of the Taste of Colerain.

She recently moved into another school district.

"He's been at Colerain since second grade so this is devastating to him," Heath said.

Kim Sargeant said her son made one of the videos in question as part of a project for his social media class. He got an A, she said.

Michael Packnett said his son, a junior, was manhandled because he wouldn't give up his cell phone.

"He was choked down to the ground," Packnett said. "He said he was seeing stars. These kids were treated like criminals."

Parents said their complaints to district officials fell on deaf ears and the expulsion hearings didn't give their kids a fair chance.

The school disciplined several students and called in extra police to escort them off campus. One of the infractions was a dress-code violation regarding a potential gang reference on a student's sweatshirt, police said.

At the time, Police Chief Mark Denney said officers searched cell phones and social media and found no evidence of the threat, according to The Enquirer story.

All four students represented in the case were suspended and expelled, said Robert Newman, senior partner at Newman & Meeks, Co., L.P.A. in Cincinnati, the firm representing the parents.

Newman said three of the students have returned to school, and the fourth transferred to Fairfield Senior High School.

"We are only asking that the record of expulsion be deleted from these school records be expunged form these school records so that these expulsions do not appear on college applications," Newman said. "We don't want their college futures and post-secondary school futures injured because of what we feel were illegal expulsions."

Reporters Keith BieryGolick and Jennie Key contributed.

An earlier version of this story erroneously stated the amount of the lawsuit. The correct amount requested in the complaint is $25,000.